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GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences Center for Faculty Excellence
September 2024 Faculty Spotlight
Excellence in teaching & learning, scholarly endeavors, and leadership are all around us at GW Medicine. The Center for Faculty Excellence would like to Spotlight our faculty and staff contributions to SMHS, George Washington University, and beyond. Each month we will spotlight faculty and staff from across SMHS, MFA, and Children's. We want to thank our highlighted members for sharing with us their advice and perspectives!
- SMHS Center for Faculty Excellence
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Join the CFE as we highlight Dr. Jennifer Keller, MD, MPH, FACOG (she/her), who discusses her journey within the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OBGYN)and her role as the Director of the Office of Professional and Respectful Learning (OPRL). She discusses her journey from trainee to faculty, how leadership roles within residency education and her department led her to the OPRL, and the importance of open communication and understanding in resolving issues in academic medicine. Finally, Dr. Keller discusses some of the current initiatives and future directions the office has to improve the learning environment.
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Biography
Jennifer Keller, MD, MPH, FACOG, is board-certified in obstetrics & gynecology, and a professor at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, and Director, Office of Professional and Respectful Learning. Dr. Keller attended Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL before coming to Washington D.C. for her residency training. Dr. Keller has been faculty at GW since completing her residency and has served as the OBGYN Residency Program Director, the Vice-Chair of the GME Committee and is currently the Division Director of Education in OBGYN.
Dr. Keller specializes in providing patient-centered, evidence-based care for her patients. She values the patient-physician relationship and feels very privileged to be able to provide care to women and their families through their entire lives. Dr. Keller believes that her patients are her partners when they arrive for medical care, and that medical decisions should be a process of ongoing collaboration between the physician and patient. Her areas of interest include preventative care, contraception, menopause and minimally invasive surgery.
Dr. Keller is board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and is a Fellow in the American College of Obstetrician Gynecologists (ACOG). She has served on a number of committees with ACOG and is currently the Vice-Chair of the Council in Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
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Interview Q/A
How long have you been at GW Medicine? What drew you to your current position?
Jenny: I came to GW as a resident in 2003, and after graduating, I was offered a faculty position and a role as the Assistant Residency Program Director. I was very excited to stay in the GW community, where I felt that I could contribute to our missions and receive great mentorship.
In November of 2022, I assumed my current role as the Director of the Office of Professional and Respectful Learning (OPRL). I was drawn to this role because I love being a part of this academic community, and I want every person who is a part of this community to have a positive experience at GW. In my role as director of OPR, I can impact and influence the experiences of all the learners, which is an amazing opportunity.
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Why did you decide to pursue a career in OBGYN, and subsequently the Director of the OPRL?
Jenny: I decided to pursue a career in OBGYN because I love the specialty's procedural nature and the deep relationships we are able to create with our patients. Our scope of practice ranges from care during pregnancy to general reproductive health, so the combination of all the life events a person may experience makes OBGYN a pretty special and unique field.
During my time in the residency program for OBGYN and now as the director of education for the department, I helped to implement a number of initiatives to improve the overall learning environment in OBGYN. As a field, OBGYN struggles with a clinical learning environment that is often fast-paced and novel and can be really hard for students, residents, and faculty. My experience in the department translated well into my current role in OPRL, where I am taking on many of the same challenges but from a broader scale across all departments within GW Medicine.
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What are your major responsibilities here at GW Medicine?
Jenny: In terms of clinical service, I care for patients, which is one of my favorite aspects of responsibility. As a clinician, I practice the full scope of our field, including labor and delivery, surgery, and office care.
In addition to my role as the Director of OPRL, I am also the Director of Education for my department; I assist the clerkship team and residency team, facilitate a lot of faculty development for the department, and oversee all the education in our department.
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What is your favorite thing about your current role or responsibilities?
Jenny: One of my favorite things is helping people understand one another. So often, negative experiences happen due to a lack of understanding of another person's perspective. Being able to help facilitate communication between learners and educators is super rewarding.
I also really enjoy teaching first-year residents new skills. For example, walking them through a vaginal birth or cesarean delivery, or IUD insertion. Supporting them, knowing they are nervous and believing in them allows me to coach them through the procedure and to help them gain more confidence and skill in their abilities.
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The OPRL has become a critical component in maintaining a positive learning environment for GW Medicine’s various trainees, learners, faculty, and staff. Can you tell us a little more about its various responsibilities?
Jenny: The OPRL has various responsibilities, including overseeing the processes for responding to mistreatment and recognizing the great things people are doing. We also have initiatives that influence the learning environment across the medical school. Examples of these initiatives are two infographics on the best practices utilizing social media, what to ask yourself before you post, and what questions to consider about the content of your post, which we developed along with the Center for Faculty Excellence. We are developing a self-paced module on the topic as well. In addition, we are working with the Committee on the Learning Environment on a document on language equity in the clinical learning environment due to many concerns from learners related to interpretation and translation.
I would also like to recognize Sirisha Prasad, our administrative associate at OPRL. Sirisha’s work within our office is essential and helps us function daily and keep all our initiatives on track.
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While people may think of the OPRL in terms of the mistreatment, you also have a mechanism for reporting excellence. Can you tell us about how this works and what you want people to know about this initiative?
Jenny: Yes! It is a fantastic initiative, and it is great to read about all our extraordinary educators!
I really want to shine a light on the excellence around us. Anyone can submit a learning environment accolade through the OPRL reporting system on the website. You can submit one about anybody; faculty, residents, staff, nurses, etc., that made your experience great. We then share this with the person who is being recognized, as well as their direct supervisor or leadership, and it gets put on our OPRL website and shared with the dean's office. Accolades have been shared at the SMHS Fall and Spring Faculty Assembly meetings so that the GW Medicine community is also aware of our colleagues’ efforts.
This initiative makes such a massive difference for the people being recognized, and it is heartwarming to see their reactions and how much it truly makes their day.
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What about the future of the OPRL and GW excites you?
Jenny: We are a relatively new office with new processes, and what excites me is everything we hope to do in the future and how much we hope to grow. I look forward to our office taking on larger initiatives and strengthening connections with all the departments and regional sites. We want to spread the word more and more about our work and mission.
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What impact do you hope to have on trainees, colleagues, and/or peers through these roles?
Jenny: I make an effort to model the qualities that successful healthcare teams embody. The impact that I hope to have by modeling these positive behaviors is instilling in others the values of kindness, respect, trustworthiness, and dedication that they'll continue to spread to other environments and new institutions. So much data shows that people trained in a positive learning environment take better care of patients and take that with them along their journey. I hope that in all of my roles, both as an educator when working with a student in the operating room and my role in the OPRL, I can instill these qualities in our learners.
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What are you looking forward to working on or doing here at GW?
Jenny: In the last year, I have enjoyed getting to know people outside of OBGYN more and understanding more about the undergraduate medical program and its workings. I look forward to continuing that and further developing those relationships with the other departments and institutions and making a difference in those places as well.
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How does this spotlight/recognition make you feel?
Jenny: It is humbling and gratifying to be recognized this way. It allowed me to look back on my own journey and accomplishments and to be grateful for all of the people who helped me along the way. It makes me proud of our institution because I genuinely feel that every person here cares about taking excellent care of patients and is dedicated to making this a better place.
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What is one thing that keeps you motivated during the day?
Jenny: The idea that we can make a difference keeps me motivated during the day. Sometimes, it's our actions that make a difference, a singular comment you said, or a small thing you did that made a difference for a patient or a student; they may not always be memorable to us, but it does make a difference. Those small achievements and moments motivate me to be the best I can be, even in challenging times, because I know the impact is much greater on those around me.
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